Operation Sunrise
The surrender negotiations between German officers and Americans in the final phase of World War II in March 1945 were named Operation Sunrise . The British gave the negotiations the name Operation Crossword .
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Specifically , after being contacted by Swiss middlemen (including Max Waibel and Max Husmann ) at the end of February , the Bern- based OSS agent Allen Dulles negotiated for the first time in Zurich on March 8, 1945 with SS-Obergruppenführer and Highest SS and Police Leader in Italy Karl Wolff on the partial surrender of the German armed forces in northern Italy. As a token of goodwill, Wolff had released two partisan leaders; Dulles reported to Washington that Wolff was to be taken seriously.
Since the negotiations took place without the Soviet Union , this triggered a lively correspondence between Stalin and Roosevelt , as the Soviet Union feared that a partial German surrender on the western front would free more armed forces for the eastern front .
Overall, the negotiations were very sluggish and new hurdles emerged. Talks took place in Ascona on March 18 and 19 . Wolff's uninformed superior Heinrich Himmler forbade the suspicious trips. After the death of American President Roosevelt on April 12th, Dulles was instructed by the new President Truman not to continue the talks, which he did not care. At the Dorenbach estate near Lucerne, the negotiators went in and out until April 27, when Waibel received a request to bring two German parliamentarians to the Allied headquarters in Caserta. The partial capitulation was announced on the German side on April 29, 1945 by the two emissaries Victor von Schweinitz, Lieutenant Colonel and General Staff Officer of Army Group C , on behalf of the Commander-in-Chief Southwest, Colonel General Heinrich von Vietinghoff , and SS-Sturmbannführer Eugen Wenner, on behalf of Karl Wolff, signed in the castle of Caserta . Wenner also appeared indirectly through Wolff as a representative of the Italian Social Republic , which was not officially recognized by the Allies , as Rodolfo Graziani Wolff had previously issued a corresponding power of attorney. The British General William Duthie Morgan, Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Harold Alexander , signed for the Allies . The Soviet military attaché in Rome, General Aleksey Kislenko, acted as an observer for the Soviet Union in Caserta.
The surrender came into force on May 2, 1945 at 12:00 noon Greenwich Mean Time , six days before the all-German surrender on May 8, 1945, for all armed forces under or controlled by the German Commander-in-Chief Southwest.
literature
- Allen Dulles , Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz : Company Sunrise. The secret story of the end of the war in Italy , Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1967
- Kerstin von Lingen : SS and Secret Service. "Conspiracy of Silence": The Karl Wolff Files . Schoeningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76744-8
- Katherine Schiemann: The secret service ends the war. "Operation Sunrise" and the German surrender in Italy , in: Jürgen Heideking , Christoph Mauch: Secret Service War against Germany. Subversion, propaganda and political planning of the American secret service in World War II , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-525-01350-7
- Shraga Elam: Waibel's solar eclipse , in: "Operation Sunrise". Atti del convegno internazionale (Locarno, 2 maggio 2005), a cura di Marino Viganò - Dominic M. Pedrazzini (Lugano 2006) [1]
- Sara Randell: Ending the War. Operation Sunrise and Max Husmann , Stämplfi Verlag, Bern 2018
Individual evidence
- ^ A b «Operation Sunrise» - secret deal with Nazis and allies , NZZ, March 30, 2020
- ↑ Caserta nella storia: 73 anni fa la resa dei tedeschi in Italia. In: casertanews.it. April 29, 2019, accessed November 5, 2019 (Italian).